Rebecca Cheptegei. File picture
Ugandan athlete Rebecca Cheptegei died final week from accidents she sustained when her former boyfriend poured petrol on her and set her alight.
She grew to become the third lady athlete to die by the hands of a person in western Kenya up to now three years.
Cheptegei, 33, constructed a stable 15-year profession operating cross nation, marathons and different lengthy distance races. She represented Uganda on the Paris Olympics final month and held the Ugandan nationwide girls’s marathon report.
She was born and raised in Bukwo, a Ugandan district bordering Kenya.
Over the course of her profession, she purchased land and constructed a home in Trans Nzoia county in western Kenya, to be nearer to elite coaching services.
On the time of her assault, she was reportedly in battle along with her boyfriend, Dickson Ndiema Marangach, a Kenyan athlete, over this property.
On the fateful day, based on Kenyan police, Cheptegei and her two daughters had simply returned from church when Marangach sneaked into her home and attacked.
The hearth he lit additionally burnt him, however not almost as severely as Cheptegei.
She suffered burns over 80% of her physique, based on the top of Moi Instructing and Referral Hospital, the place she later died.
“It led to a number of organ failure. We tried our greatest however we didn’t succeed. Taking a look at her age and the over 80% burns she suffered, the hope of restoration was slim,” Kimani Mbugua, the top of the hospital’s intensive care unit, informed journalists.
“This tragedy is a stark reminder of the pressing must fight gender-based violence, which has more and more affected even elite sports activities,” Kenyan Sports activities Minister Kipchumba Murkomen mentioned in a press release.
One in three girls in Kenya report struggling bodily violence or abuse, based on a 2022 official report, and success places girls athletes significantly in danger.
In February 2023, Olympic gold medallist Vivian Cheruiyot informed a Kenyan newspaper that her husband had taken management of her properties, together with fuel stations and farmland, and that, when she objected, he abused her bodily and psychologically.
In April 2022, Kenyan-born Damaris Muthee Mutua, 28, was discovered strangled within the city of Iten, a world-famous high-altitude coaching centre.
The October earlier than that, World Athletics Championships bronze medallist Agnes Tirop was discovered stabbed to demise, once more in Iten.
In each cases, their intimate companions have been the suspected murderers.
In 2021 Edith Muthoni, a 27-year-old runner residing in Nairobi, was discovered along with her throat slit with a machete.
In 2014 one other lady Kenyan runner, Lucy Kabuu, was sued by her ex-husband for management of half of her properties.
“The husbands anticipate them to convey dwelling cash,” Njeri Migwi, the manager director of Usikimye, an advocacy group that focuses on gender-based violence, informed the New Yorker in 2023.
“The minute they need sure ranges of independence, the lads abuse them.”
The lads implicated in these assaults have confronted few penalties. Mutua’s physique was present in the home of an Ethiopian athlete named Eskinder Hailemaryam Folie, and a police post-mortem mentioned she was strangled.
Folie went on the run, and was reported to have gone again to Ethiopia. He’s nonetheless at massive.
Tirop’s husband, Ibrahim Rotich – a person 15 years her senior who grew to become her supervisor after assembly her as a secondary college pupil – was arrested for her homicide and reportedly confessed. He’s out of jail on bail.
It stays to be seen what, if any, prices shall be introduced in opposition to Dickson Ndiema Marangach.
This text first appeared in The Continent, the pan-African weekly newspaper produced in partnership with the Mail & Guardian. It’s designed to be learn and shared on WhatsApp. Obtain your free copy at thecontinent.org